The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

GETTYSBURG, Pa. — It’s totally understandable that people get tired of hearing and seeing sensational clickbait threatening another existential crisis emergency. But please don’t allow this one to go unheeded.

In my life and times, I’ve reported on all kinds of politicians who warned the public of an impending existential crisis. I plead guilty to having cried wolf a few times too, like the The Boy Who Cried Wolf from Aesop’s Fables.

But as the years have gone by and the threats to democracy and life on Earth continue to grow exponentially, we have no real choice but to keep putting up the red flag and warning people like a red rough surf undertow warning flag on an eroding beach.

I learned how to raise the red flag in a news story lede back when the Associated Press spelled it lead, meaning the first sentence or paragraph in a news story.

In 1992, I warned people along the Gulf Coast about the threats posed by the EMPRESS II, an electromagnetic pulse radiation environmental simulator for ships the Navy wanted to locate off the beaches in the Gulf of Mexico to test the hardening of onboard computers against the EMP pulse effect of an atmospheric nuclear explosion.

The public got fired up, involved and stopped it, then. Many years later, the very same technology would be developed into offensive weapons, just as I warned.

Havana Syndrome Clearly Caused by Directed Energy Weapon

I tried to warn people at the turn of the century not to elect George W. Bush as president — and again in 2004 — but not enough people listened.

George W. Bush’s Lost Year in 1972 Alabama

In 2008, many of us warned that times were too dangerous to elect John McCain and Sarah Palin, and a miracle happened. The first African American president strode with confidence into the White House along with his amazing wife and two smart, lovely daughters.

In 2016, I tried to warn people that Trump could very well be elected president, when no one else besides Michael Moore believed it was possible. People didn’t listen and vote and the ascendence of this “Confidence Man” came to pass, and all hell broke loose.

In 2018, we warned people to show up and vote to put Democrats back in charge of the House, and they responded, especially women in great numbers. We retook the House.

In 2020, we warned people that it was too dangerous to allow Trump a second term, and even though many were reluctant to vote for an old white guy like Joe Biden, millions did, and the Democrats in Atlanta, Georgia also helped take back majority control of the Senate.

Well here we are again, facing another election on Nov. 8, 2022, and we are raising the red flag again. The forces of fascism, pseudo or not, are on the march to retake the House and Senate and destroy everything we have been building since 2018 and 2020.

The stakes are too high. We can’t allow this to happen.

There is good news and bad news to report.

The good news is, only 27 people, counting two security guards, showed up at a Trump rally in D.C. this week.

Only 27 people showed up to pro-Trump rally in Washington DC

The bad news is, Steve Bannon has not been sentenced and locked up yet (his sentencing hearing is set for Oct. 21), so he is still out there in his podcast trying to recruit more pro-Trump “poll watchers.”

This week Bannon hosted election denier Cleta Mitchell to recruit poll watchers as the midterms approach. Bannon rallied for his audience to sign up as poll workers, saying the midterms “can’t be like 2020. You can’t win and then not close.”

“… this is a call to arms … We closed in ‘16,” he said. “We didn’t close in ‘20.”

Steve Bannon on recruiting election deniers to volunteer for 2022 midterms: “This is a call to arms”

Trump and his ilk are always crying wolf, claiming there looms an existential crisis, a threat to the way of life of white, Christian Americans.

On the other hand, the Biden administration of late has been like The Kraken unleashed on the corrupt forces of Ithaca.

The president of the United States showed up in Constitution Hall in Philadelphia in September and warned of this existential crisis.

“MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards,” Biden said. “Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.”

The president painted a dark portrait of a democracy on the brink, threatened by violence and able to survive only if Americans “choose a different path.”

“For a long time, we’ve told ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed,” Biden said. “But it’s not. We have to defend it. Protect it. Stand up for it. Each and every one of us.”

“Vote! Vote! Vote,” he chanted at the end.

President Biden Goes on the Offensive Against Violent Extremism

Now in Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona and yes Pennsylvania, the pollsters have Senate races ranked as dead heats, or too close to call, inside the margin of error.

Critical Pennsylvania Senate Race Tightens as Election Day Nears

4 Weeks Out, Senate Control Hangs in the Balance in Tumultuous Midterms

Unfortunately, John Lewis is no longer with us to get out the vote. But we can remember him and do what he said in 2017, vote like your life depends on it, because it probably does.

#votedougjones John Lewis says use social media and get people to vote Dec. 12. "The right to vote is sacred." So share this with everybody you know. #alpolitics pic.twitter.com/6JabzG8ENu

— Glynn Wilson (@GlynnWilson1) November 16, 2017

Remember John Lewis and Vote

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